Irma knocks out power to 200,000 in SC

Line crews worked into the night Monday to restore power to nearly 200,000 households still without power in South Carolina.

The state’s electric cooperatives reported 42,136 customers without power at 11 p.m., and SCE&G reported 63,923 customers without power. Duke Energy reported 91,911 customers without power in South Carolina.

Santee Cooper, which services electric cooperatives and the Grand Strand from below Georgetown to Little River at the North Carolina line, reported 31 outages affecting 1,010 customers at 11 p.m.

Those numbers were down from the more than 235,000 households and businesses without power in the Palmetto State at 5:30 p.m. Monday as remnants of Hurricane Irma passed to the west of the state.

Power companies warned people to stay away from downed electric lines because of the danger of electrocution. Companies and coops also put thousands of workers into the field to repair downed lines.

Charleston County was hardest-hit, with 29,422 customers without power at 11 p.m., according to SCE&G and Berkeley Electric Cooperative. In Beaufort County, 16,340 customers were without power, according to SCE&G and Palmetto Electric Cooperative

The numbers of outages ebbed and spiked – but kept rising – minute-by-minute Monday as crews worked to restore power and more power losses were reported.

In the Midlands, there were 11,144 customers without power in Lexington County and 7,922 without power in Richland County at 11 p.m., according to utility companies. Aiken County had 5,078 customers without power.

Duke Energy reported its scattered power outages mostly in the Upstate, including Greenville County, which had 26,845 customers without power at 11 p.m., and Anderson County with 22,392. Pickens County had more than 13,300 cutsomers without power late Monday, according to Duke.

In 1989, when the Category 4 Hurricane Hugo struck South Carolina, more than 300,000 residences and businesses lost power, according to news accounts.

In Florida, Hurricane Irma caused more than 6.5 million people to lose power Monday, according to news accounts.

In Georgia, Irma left more than 465,000 without power by noontime, according to news accounts. That number was expected to grow as the storm moved north.

This story was originally published September 11, 2017 at 8:14 AM with the headline "Irma knocks out power to 200,000 in SC."